Since 2004, Melinda Fields has been an invaluable part of the First-year Writing Program, serving as a liaison between students, teachers, and the Director. One of her many tasks includes helping students register for 100-level courses, a duty that she balances with her work as a Well Bama Ambassador. When I first walk into Fields’ office for this interview, she has heated her lunch, and the aroma of chicken and steamed vegetables fills the room. “Sorry I have to eat […]

Read More from Going to Bat for Writers: An Interview with Melinda Fields

Michelle Dowd joined the University of Alabama in the fall of 2016 as Hudson Strode Professor of English and Director of the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies. Before joining the faculty at Alabama, she taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and at Fordham University. Her work primarily concerns the intersection of economics and gender in Renaissance drama. Her last book, The Dynamics of Inheritance on the Shakespearean Stage, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2015. […]

Read More from Michelle Dowd: New Director of the Hudson Strode Program

“Early” is the keyword when talking about Cassie Smith. Smith describes herself as an “early African Americanist and an early Americanist and an early Modernist.” Her new book, Black Africans in the British Imagination, explores representations of black Africans in the early Americas. Smith is interested in the narratives that lie outside the realm of typical slave narratives readers have come to expect. She explains, “Conventional wisdom says that the story of black Africans in the early Americas was about […]

Read More from Cassie Smith’s New Book: Black Africans in the British Imagination

Shanti Weiland earned her Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Mississippi and has been an Instructor in the Department of English since 2008. Her book, Sister Nun, recently appeared from Negative Capability Press in 2016. Did the poems in Sister Nun create a theme for you, or did you envision a theme and then begin to write? In 2010, I was hanging out in a friend’s pool, on what was probably the last reasonable pool-day-weather, and lamenting […]

Read More from Shanti Weiland’s Sister Nun and the Zen of Typing

In the fall 2016, Department Chair Joel Brouwer put together an ad hoc committee, or task force, to look into recruiting new English majors.  This faculty group, including Lauren Cardon, John Estes, James McNaughton, Luke Niiler, Deborah Weiss, Duncan Yoon, and, in fall semester, Ray Wachter—has extended its purview to increasing minors as well as majors, and has come up with improvements and suggestions for current practice. For instance, this semester, task force members have recommended creating a better sense […]

Read More from Report: English Major Recruitment Task Force

The Diversity Committee is comprised of five members—two tenure/tenure-track faculty, one instructor, one graduate student, and one undergraduate major. These members are Dr. Cassie Smith (chair), Dr. Nikhil Bilwakesh, Dr. Mary-Margaret Popova, Stephanie Parker (graduate student representative), and Maya Perry (undergraduate English major). Our basic charge is to keep track of all the ways the department promotes diversity in terms of the classes we teach, the lectures and symposia we sponsor and academic advising. At the end of the academic […]

Read More from Report: Diversity Committee Achievements